In addition to typical Internet traffic coming from Internet users, many websites are subject to various forms of malicious traffic. Malicious users and bots may flood websites with comment spam, links to malicious software, and generate ingenuine clicks, visits, hits, etc. Various forms of fraud and fraudulent solicitations may also be disseminated.
This malicious traffic may consume website resources, as web servers unknowingly serve content to malicious and/or fraudulent entities such as click fraud bots. The unwanted traffic may skew website analytics and make, for example, website hit, visitor, and geographic source data unreliable. The dilution of the quality and reliability of website analytics may deter potential advertisers from advertising on a given website. Further, as malicious activity on a website increases, user and advertiser trust may erode, both damaging website revenues and branding.
Accordingly, solutions are needed to identify malicious users and malicious traffic.